4 That campaign was compromised by irreconcilables respecting the law, as it pertained to slavery, and Christian precepts as they had been interpreted, see R. C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Johannesburg, 1994), 330-50. [ Links ]

9 'English law became more important simply because English ideas and institutions came to dominate life in the colony.' (J. Meierhenrich, The Legacies of Law: Long-Run Consequences of Legal Development in South Africa, 1652-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 93-4). [ Links ]

10 E. Fagan, 'Roman-Dutch Law in its South African Historical Context' in R. Zimmerman and D. Visser, eds, Southern Cross, Civil Law and Common Law in South Africa (Cape Town, 1996), 33-64; [ Links ]

A.F.S. Maasdorp, C.A. Beck and O.H. Hoexter, eds, The Institutes of South African Law, being a Compendium of the Common Law, Decided Cases, and Statute Law of the Union of South Africa, 4 vols (Cape Town & Johannesburg, 1929), 1, 88-103. [ Links ]

40 Kramer v Findlay's Executors, E.J. Buchanan, ed, Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the Cape of Good Hope during the Year 1878 (Johannesburg, 1973), 51-2. [ Links ]

41 Legal adoption came with the Act of 1923. Prior to that, 'adoption' was a form of fostering. For an exception regarding the exclusion of bastards, see E. Bradlow, '"The Oldest Charitable Society in South Africa": One Hundred Years and More of the Ladies' Benevolent Society at the Cape of Good Hope', South African Historical Journal 25, 1991, 86. [ Links ]

82 Such evasions were less likely to succeed with improvements in long-distance communications. (W. Stoney, 'Can a Deserted Spouse, without having obtained a divorce, apply to the court for leave to re-marry?', Cape Law Journal, 12, 176. [ Links ]

Those who entered into an ante-nuptial contract (a minority of Cape marriages) were also protected, M.J. de Waal, 'Law, Society and the Individual: The Limits of Testation', in Visser, ed, Essays on the History of Law, 314. [ Links ]

It has been 'controversial whether children who were legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents acquired their status ... from the date of marriage or retrospectively from the date of their birth'. (D.S.P. Cronjé and J. Heaton, The South African Law of Persons (Durban: Lexisnexis Butterworths, 2003), 76). [ Links ]

122 In the nineteenth century, the authorities attempted to determine if an infant was alive at birth by placing the lungs in water, a crude version of the current hydrostatic test. See Cronjé and Heaton, The South African Law of Persons, 7, n. 5. [ Links ]